Office Mobile for Android phones

We are thrilled that Office Mobile for Android phones is available in the U.S. today. Office 365 subscribers will be able to download the app from the Google Play store and activate it. The release of this app shows that we’re committed to keep providing additional value for Office 365 subscribers. Office 365 subscribers will now be able to access, view, and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents with Windows Phone, iPhone and Android phones. Here is the official announcement of the news.

Update 3/27/2014: You no longer need an Office 365 subscription to edit documents with Office Mobile for Android phones. You must update to the latest version of the Office Mobile app to enable free document editing and creation.

I will provide some more detail about Office Mobile for Android phones, and answer some questions that you might have.

If you aren’t already an Office 365 subscriber, you can visit www.office.com to learn more about Office 365 and sign up for a free 30 day trial.

Signing in

When signing in to Office Mobile for Android phones, you can use either a Microsoft Account associated with your Office 365 Home Premium or Office 365 University subscription or an Organization account for all other Office 365 accounts. You can find the full list of eligible Office 365 subscriptions later in this blog post. Don’t worry if you have both types of accounts. You can access cloud storage places, for example SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro, after you sign-in.

On the recent documents tab, the last documents you worked on from either your PC – running the new Office – or phone will automatically show up here. This is made possible by Office 365’s roaming documents feature so that you always have quick access to the most up to date version of documents you worked on.

On the Locations tab you can see all of your connected cloud storage locations and add additional locations, such as SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro or SharePoint sites.

Getting around Office Mobile

From the home page you can easily move between your recent documents, your cloud storage locations, and creating a new Word or Excel document. Let’s take a look at each area.

The New Documents tab lets you create a new Word or Excel document from your phone and provides templates to get you started quickly

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Word

You can read, edit and create new Word documents with Office Mobile. Word is optimized for the small screen of your Android phone, making your documents look great. When you open a Word document from SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro, it will open at the exact place you left off on your PC or phone. The menu bar disappears a few seconds after opening the document, so that you can truly focus on the content of the document.

The document outline helps you navigate the document outline and comments, which is handy for when you want to review just a particular section of a long document

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Tap the pencil on the menu bar and you get access to the most common editing, commenting and formatting options.

Once you’re done making changes to a Word document, you can share it via email or save the document to SkyDrive.

Excel

Excel worksheets, tables, and charts are beautifully scaled to fit your phone screen. When you update numbers in the spreadsheet, the entire workbook will recalculate. You can also create charts, utilize AutoSum features and filter data in tables.

The Outline View lets you jump to the worksheet, chart or table of your choosing. From the Outline View, you can also quickly navigate to comments.

You can also filter or sort data in tables, in order to get new insights.

Select any range of cells and using the AutoSum feature you can instantly view the total, average, count, maximum and minimum values for that range.

With that same selected data, you can quickly create a chart.

Finally, you can format cells to clearly highlight the most important data.

PowerPoint

Preparing for your upcoming presentation is now more convenient with Office Mobile for Android phones. You can review your slides and edit speaker notes, move and hide slides, and make text edits directly from your phone. In the navigation bar, the Slide Navigator replaces the Viewing Tools from Word and Excel.

In Portrait mode you can see your slides and notes, edit your speaker notes, and practice your presentation.

In Landscape mode, swipe through your presentation and view it.

With the Slide Navigator, you can quickly jump to any slide.

Tap the pencil on the menu bar and you can make changes to the text on the slide.

Settings

When you click the options button while on the Office Mobile home screen, you can access the settings for Office Mobile. The settings page lets you reset Office Mobile and add an identity for comments made on your phone. Resetting Office returns the app to initial state and deletes all your documents and cloud storage locations from the phone.

You can also access help documentation, see the version number, read the Terms of Service and Privacy policy, and select Improve Office Mobile settings.

Frequently asked questions

What are the requirements to use Office Mobile for Android phones?

There are two key requirements:

You need a qualifying Office 365 subscription plan that includes the Office 2013 desktop applications (see list below). After you download and install Office Mobile for Android phones, just sign in with your Office 365 username and password to activate the app.

A phone running Android OS 4.0 or greater.

What Office 365 subscriptions include Office Mobile?

Any Office 365 subscription plan that includes the full Office 2013 desktop applications also includes Office Mobile. Specifically, these plans are: Office 365 Home Premium, Office 365 Small Business Premium, Office 365 Midsize Business, Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4, Office 365 Education A3 and A4, Office 365 ProPlus, and Office 365 University. There are also Office 365 government plans that include Office Mobile.

What languages and markets will Office Mobile for Android phones be available in?

Office Mobile for Android phones will be available in 33 languages and in 117 markets. Initially, it will only be available in the United States. We will gradually expand to additional markets and languages.

How many phones can I install and activate Office Mobile for Android phones on?

Most Office 365 subscriptions grant you the license to install Office Mobile on up to 5 mobile devices, not including Windows Phone devices (which come with a pre-activated version of Office Mobile preinstalled). An Office 365 University subscription grants you the license to install Office Mobile on up to 2 mobile devices.

Is Office Mobile for Android phones available on other devices like Android tablets?

We built Office Mobile for Android phones to ensure a great Office experience when using a small screen device. Therefore, you will not be able to download and install Office Mobile for Android phones on an Android tablet from the Google Play store. If you have an Android tablet, we recommend using the Office Web Apps which provide the best Office experience on a tablet.

Completely ridiculous that you didn’t launch in Canada at the same time. It’s a simple checkbox when you upload the app. We both speak English so there isn’t a single line of code that needs changing….

I have been trying to report a bug in office 365 for android. I have talked to at least 5 customer service reps at Microsoft and just gave up. I will give it anther try. It is an issue with the auto numbering format when using an Android phone. I have a document created on a laptop and saved in Skydrive. I it has paragraphs that are numbered and a line space between the paragraphs. When I open the document and insert another paragraph in someplace after number 1 but before the end it continues the numbering but does not renumber the following items. For example if the list is 1, 2, 3, 4, I insert another paragraph after number 3, the new list is 1, 2, 3, 3, 4.